Lyx Robinson > Recent Status Updates

Picked this up in a second hand shop, the foreword almost ruined it for me by saying it was funnier than Douglas Adams' H2G2, which sets the bar SKY high. But then the story is about a boy who has to parent his disaster parents and I'm just really worried about him?! Also the humour is surely not teen humour. It's very "sensible chuckle" sort of adult humour. I don't understand how teen boys could actually like this

I am trying so harddddddd to get through this but tbh at this point it's more of a sleeping aid than anything. Nothing is happening and the author is trying hard to make Margaret Atwood-esque analogies but, they just don't work for me. Domestic analogies work in her books bc of the wider context - but here they feel random & are just trying too hard to be deep

"She bit into his shoulder. She cracked the boy like a nut between her teeth and found him savory meat."

This book is a wild ride & Lauren Groff continues to be fantastic in her prose!!

So happy to accidentally discover that these John Howe editions come in hardback!! As much as I spent the last book being a little bored by the slow pace & deciding I'd probably space out the reading of this series a lot more... the way it ended showed it was very much a transitional book & this one promises court intrigue and I can't waaaait for more Fool & Fitz
ヽ(´▽`)/

"Earlier I had seen need in the Prince's eyes, a desperate longing for connection & belonging. Did I radiate that same privation? I closed my heart and willed myself to stillness. Time would heal my grief. I repeated that lie until sleep claimed me."

(don't mind me just howling in pain over this end of book)

I think one of the reasons I am reading this so slowly is that the world was already so well built in prior books that we are only retreading old ground here & the pace is so glacial that I almost don't trust that we'll discover anything new/get anywhere exciting until the very end... I do trust this author but, my TBR pile is calling me. Might DNF for now & get back to it for comfort reading

This book revs up so slow and I can't believe I am still 100% invested even if we're mainly read the minutiae of Fitz's uneventful hermit life (also the Fool & their friendship has been built up to a pinnacle in this one and I'm actually really excited about him now! I think in prior tomes I could see what Hobb was going for a little too obviously but it wasn't quite hitting the spot, now the Fool is properly THERE)

While I got the Assassin trilogy in the new, comfy larger editions, I have the John Howe illustrated covers for Liveships and I think I will continue collecting those even if the print is bloody tiny because LOOK HOW GORGEOUS THEY ARRRRE urggghh. Wish there could be new 6x9 editions with these resized to fit the whole cover

i am trying so hard not to combust with fanart of the scene where my man Verity is kneeling by the river and saying "pull me back" aaaaaaahhhhhhhrtghrghgrhrejhdjfgk

/THROWS HERSELF BODILY INTO THIS BOOK

Every time I go through a streak of books that leave me stone cold, somehow I manage to forget that there are books that can annihilate you completely (like with this one TwT)

"His entire body was a geode, cracking open with every slice to his flesh."
:DDDD Omg this take on the Tuatha de Danann is so lovely

Weee I've had this as an audiobook for literally years & since I have a lot of Secret Illustrations I'm working on atm, I can't wait to get started! Met Emma Hamm at Apollycon this year and she is the sweetest + also has THE BEST illustrated covers and similar tastes in fantasy so I am EXCITED

[screams] What am I getting myself into aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (I wanted to read the actual original Arthurian romances but holy shit it's a clusterfuck)

Finally caved because of the gorgeous fanart & I regret nothing *w*

(I still can't believe Roux/Guyonvarc'h tried to explain the indo-european couple of "female warrior goddess + male druid god" by saying the religious class is superior to the warrior class, and therefore the warrior goddess is only female to illustrate the intrinsic inferiority of her class................ just................ ARGH.)

"In this book I will talk about the all-important aspect of sovereignty especially as illustrated by the FEMALE FIGURES in the different Celtic mythologies..."

Me, holding this book to my boobs, crying after my trek through sexist 70s academia: thank you, thank you, thank you

"You're so incredibly violent. I think I like it."

Listening to the audiobook and losing it every time Hawk opens his mouth. The narrator's British drawl is just *chef's kiss*

I also wish the Lestat rock concert wasn't so central to the plot. Not only is half the book an enormous retreading of the same narrative moment of "the eve of Lestat's concert" but from different POVs (bringing /some/ new info but mostly just building the mystery); but rockstar!Lestat also feels like an OOC AU of his character, especially with the Sudden Modern Slang thrown in. Sure he "adapts", but it's jarring af

Beginning to understand why I stopped at this book in the chronicles. Book 1 was very tortured, personal and raw; book 2 was more historical (though she had a lesser grasp of how to write Lestat than Louis; Lestat tells us who he is constantly, whereas Louis' internal monologue sufficed to itself); in this one I feel like we've lost a lot of depth & are only moving forward to chase the extremely drawn-out mystery...

[...] the blood shot down into my loins and every vessel in my body ignited with it. How many centuries had purified this blood, distilled its power?

"Drink, my young one, my wounded one."

I felt his heart swell, his body undulate, and we were sealed against each other.

I think I heard myself say: "Marius."

And he answered: "Yes."

-
[I am so normal about this man & this moment of meeting him I am SO NORMAL]

"How do I begin? You move like the right hand of God! But for me the world, the real world in which Marius lived, is beyond reach. I never lived in it. I push against the glass. But how do I get in?"

"In spite of all the refinements of civilisation that conspired to make art - the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases - beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden."

"What was it like... making love?"

"It was something hurried. And... it was seldom savoured... something acute that was quickly lost. I think that it was the pale shadow of killing."

"I have your tongue. Your passion for the truth. Your need to drive the needle of the mind right to the heart of it all, like the beak of the hummingbird, who beats so wild and fast that mortals may think he had no tiny feet, could never set, just go from quest to quest, going again and again for the heart of it."

Oh Anne, how I've missed you & your delicious prose

Shit man I am meant to be cracking down on work this week, why is it now that I gotta be picking up the most addictive series?! The MFM dynamic & inner turmoil is so well written and hot in this, I had an inkling this series would be good but damn!!

The 2 mains are so precious in this & the book is giving me so much nostalgia for Scotland ahhhhhh

I love that the main take-away thus far is that, according to Welsh & Irish myths, all poets/record-keepers/druids must go through an initiation process that invariably involves a crooked old hag who runs after them with a shaking fist until the lesson is learned

"Good criticism is like bathing in an ice-cold sea. The sudden chill of immersion in what seems at first a hostile medium soon stirs the blood and sharpens the senses."

Kissen is so fucking cool. Cropped ginger hair, "dead curse" scar on her jaw, godkilling sword? She's like Geralt of Rivia's cooler sister. I want to draw her so bad. Not sure exactly how the prosthetic leg works, but fantasy prosthetics gives lots of liberties. I also love the contrast between her absolutely obliterating that river god & then plucking off her leg and slumping in her wheelchair to rest. Brilliant